I could have told you
that my father agreed with me--that it wouldn't be possible for us to
accept your kind help."

"I hope he's better," was Davenant's only answer.

"Much better, thank you. When he's able to see you, I know he will want
to express his gratitude more fully than I can."

"I hoped he'd be able to see me to-day. I was on my way to Tory Hill."

She was annoyed both by his persistency and by the coolness of his
manner, as, leaning on his stick, he stood looking down at her. He
looked down in a way that obliged her to look up. She had not realized
till now how big and tall he was. She noticed, too, the squareness of
his jaw, the force of his chin, and the compression of his straight,
thin lips beneath the long curve of his mustache. In spite of his air of
granite imperturbability, she saw that his fair skin was subject to
little flushes of embarrassment or shyness, like a girl's. As she was in
a mood to criticize, she called this absurd and said of his blue eyes,
resting on her with a pensive directness, as though he were studying her
from a long way off, that they were hard. Deep-set and caverned under
heavy, overhanging brows, they more than any other feature imparted to
his face the frowning and _farouche_ effect by which she judged him. Had
it not been for that, her hostility to everything he said and did might
not have been so prompt. That he was working to get her into his power
became more than ever a conviction the minute she looked into what she
called that lowering gaze.

All the same, the moment was one for diplomatic action rather than for
force. She allowed a half-smile to come to her lips, and her voice to
take a tone in which there was frank request, as she said: "I wish you
wouldn't go."

"I shouldn't if it wasn't important. I don't want to annoy you more than
I can help."

"I don't see how anything can be important when--when there's nothing to
be done."

"There's a good deal to be done if we choose to do it; but we must
choose at once. The Benn crowd is getting restive."

"That doesn't make any difference to us. My father has decided to take
the consequences of his acts."

"You say that so serenely that I guess you don't understand yet just
what they'd be."

"I do--I do, perfectly. My father and I have talked it all over. We know
it will be terrible; and yet it would be more terrible still to let some
one else pay our debts. I dare say you think me monstrous, but--"

"I thi